


Flight

by xylohypha



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Aftermath of off-screen violence and torture, Gen, Not Iron Man 3 Compliant, POV Outsider, Rescue from peril, Steve/Tony content is pretty minimal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-22
Updated: 2013-06-22
Packaged: 2017-12-15 17:56:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/852375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xylohypha/pseuds/xylohypha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony's in a fix again, and although most of us who are familiar with his life would expect that he'll get out of it, that isn't so obvious to Kerda—who just wanted to find out what had everyone at the School so excited.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flight

"So, be seated, my children—and be quiet, though I know how difficult that is, so early in the morning—and I shall tell you a tale of a time before your knowledge and of the very earliest beginnings of how this place came to be. Long, long ago that may be by your reckoning, but time is mysterious thing, and it flows according to its own whim. 

"Open your ears and hear me, as we mark this anniversary of the day our world changed, though little we knew it at the time."

* * *

Kerda was minding his own business, simply on his way from breakfast back to his room, when one of the senior students grabbed him by his arm.

"Hey, slug, you're needed in the Old Tower. Master Simco needs two fresh buckets of water up there, in the big room just shy of the top. And be quick about it!"

"Aw, why? I hauled water up there yesterday until the reservoir was full," Kerda said. And he had other things he'd wanted to get to this morning. There had been whispering at table that a stranger had come to the School of Science and no one knew who or why. There was bound to be more information to be had if a person poked around stealthily and kept his ears and eyes open. It was surprising how people didn't seem to expect anyone to be listening from outside their windows, when all it took to get there was a good head for heights, a willingness to creep along a narrow ledge or two, and maybe a strong length of rope. He smirked a little at the thought of the coil of rope hidden beneath his tunic. 

The senior gave his arm a wrench and shoved him in the direction of the well-courtyard. "You don't have to know why, slug. Just get up there with that water. Simco's in a foul mood and I don't envy you if he has to wait any longer."

"Crap, crap, crap," Kerda muttered as he filled his buckets and trudged across the courtyards and into the Old Tower with its tediously winding staircase. If he'd been around when the Tower had been being built, he'd have advised the builder to put more thought into whether it _really_ needed to be that tall. It wasn't like the School needed to be built to hold off attackers, like a castle in the ancient days.

He didn't meet anyone on his way up, but as he got closer to the top, he could hear voices raised in anger. Great. He set his buckets down outside the big door and raised his hand to lift the knocker, but stopped when he heard someone inside yelling. And it wasn't just angry yelling this time; someone in there was hurt. Kerda gave two quick knocks and bent to pick up his buckets again.

He could smell it as soon as the door opened: burning cloth, and burning meat, and something vile and pungent over it all.

Simco's junior apprentice, Lawlor, shouldered into the opening gap between the door and the jamb. "It's about time!" He grabbed the buckets from Kerda, and slammed the door shut again with his hip. But over Lawlor's shoulder as he stooped for the buckets, Kerda saw a stranger— _the_ stranger, it had to be—but he wasn't an honored guest or even a visiting official, because he was shackled to the far wall, and he'd had awful things done to him.

Kerda flinched back from the closed door, then skittered away from it, and down the short hallway and around the corner into the little alcove there. He felt cold all over, and like he might vomit. Awful things. No one should have those things done to him, even if he was a monster, and the man he'd seen wasn't a monster; he was just a man. Aside from his injuries, there wouldn't have been anything to mark him apart if Kerda had seen him on the streets of the town he'd been born in, except perhaps to wonder at the strange shaping of his beard and the paleness of his skin. But that glowing-blue shape in— _in_ —his chest, and the wires that came from it and tied him to the machines on the table beside him, that was so very wrong that it made the blood on his face and the bruises and the burns seem like nothing. And the blood and the bruises and the burns would have been horrifying on their own, because they didn't belong in the School. That wasn't the learning Kerda had come to the School for, and he wanted no part of it. Any of it.

He heard the faint squeak of hinges as the door opened, and he shrank back against the stones of the alcove. There was a dragging noise, and the clink of key in lock and then another door opening—must be the tall narrow room on the other side of the stairwell which was used as a store-room—and a dull thump and a groan, and then the thud of the door closing, and a metallic rattling sound. Footsteps and arguing voices in low, intense tones faded away, echoing down the stairwell. 

Kerda waited a moment, then peered cautiously out from his hiding place. No one was within view, so he eased along the wall until he could see the head of the stairs and the store-room door. No one was standing guard, but there was a chain securing the bar on the door. He held his breath and listened, but couldn't hear anything from inside. 

But. The store-room had a window, set high up in the far wall. He'd seen it when Lawlor had had the store-room door open on the day before, on one of Kerda's many trips carrying water up to the reservoir. Kerda cautiously descended the stairs to the next landing, and eyed the narrow window there. 

His shoulders just fit through the opening. Kerda squirmed around on the sill until he could shift and stretch to set his feet on the nearest turn of the narrow decorative ledge which wound around and up the outside of the Tower, and made his cautious way upward. There weren't as many hand and foot-holds on this side of the Tower as there were in the wall outside the dormitory, but Kerda had become canny in the ways of clinging and moving across the face of a stone wall, and soon he was at the window he wanted.

Feet planted on the turn of the ledge which ran just below the window, and one hand clinging to a hold to one side of it, Kerda freed his knife from its sheath and ran it between the shutters. It caught the latch on his third try, and he teased it free. The shutters swung back, and he bent his head forward to look inside the room. 

There wasn't anyone there. Kerda blinked and looked again. The room was dark, and his eyes might have been dazzled by the sun-bright day. No, there were stacks of small lumber piled high against the walls, and there was a stain on the stones in the center of the room, but no stranger lying there. He took firmer grasp of his handhold and leaned in through the window as far as he could. 

"Stranger?" he called softly, and then squeaked and flinched back as something swung past his nose close enough that he felt the wind of its passing. "What? No!" He took another quick, foolhardy look, and there the stranger was, holding a piece of building-beam in his hands, pressed up close to the wall underneath and just to the right of the window. "Don't hit me! You'll make me fall!"

"What the hell?" the stranger said. "What're you doing up there, kid?" He had a funny accent, the shaping of his words not quite like anything Kerda had heard before.

"I—I—" Kerda found himself stammering. He leaned forward again, and the stranger didn't hit at him, but the blue thing in his chest glowed, and his eyes shone as he stepped back a pace and looked straight back up at Kerda. "I—it's not right, what they've done to you. At all. And—I think you need to leave here."

"Would if I could," the stranger said, "but the door's locked, and even I couldn't build a ladder to get up to that window in the amount of time they're likely to leave me in here to 'recover my senses and think it over'." He sounded like he was quoting someone. "To be honest, I saw your knife, and thought it might give me an advantage if I could get hold of it."

"It is a good knife," Kerda said, impressed that even a stranger could tell its value. "They've got swords, though." Even if the swords all the Masters wore and the shorter blades the apprentices treasured rarely saw any use beyond marking their status. "Maybe—" and there wasn't really any other option, "maybe if you can get up here and outside with me, I can show you a place where you could hide until nightfall? And then you can get away?" And take me with you, he didn't say, but there wasn't any way he was going to stay at the School after this. "I've got a rope."

"That sounds like a better plan than me trying to build a trebuchet out of what I've got here," the stranger said, and grinned at him. Kerda couldn't help but grin back at him. "Rope?" the stranger prompted. "And maybe hurry it up?"

"Oh. There's a window," he explained as he went through the contortions necessary to free the rope from where it was wound about his middle, "Down there. And I'll probably hear them coming up the stairs, but yeah. Hurry."

Getting the stranger the ten feet up to the store-room window wasn't as easy as just lowering the end of the rope to him and letting him climb up. He wasn't a bulky man, but he probably weighed half again as much as Kerda, and Kerda had to get creative about securing the rope around and between some protruding stonework and then lean in and try to anchor it around his body and against the wall to keep it from pulling free. The stranger was quick, though, and once he had climbed far enough to reach the window ledge, he pulled himself the rest of the way up and through, groaning as he slid his body to perch on the stones and turned to swing his legs outside. 

The sunlight made clear what the dimness of the room had hidden: the horrible thing in his chest, the dried blood on the stranger's face and hands, and the bruises, and where the odd-looking fabric of his clothing had been torn and burned away. Kerda felt sick again. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"Not even close," the stranger said, "but it's not like I haven't worked around that before." He held out his hand, as if reaching for Kerda, and then said. "Hi, I'm Tony."

Kerda gave him a questioning look, and then when Tony didn't move, reached out to tap his own palm against Tony's. That seemed to be what Tony had been waiting for, because he pulled his hand back. "I'm Kerda. Let's go. This way—and be careful."

"Careful's my middle name," said Tony. Kerda thought he might be lying about that, or maybe the people where Tony was from just had different thoughts about what was a good name.

The hiding place Kerda led Tony to was just a small semi-sheltered ledge in the angle between two walls, but it wasn't visible from the ground anywhere inside the School's walls, and someone would have to lean far out from that one window in order to see them there. It wasn't perfect, but it was the best Kerda could think of. Tony was flagging by the time they'd made their way there, and Kerda had had to talk him through where to place his hands and feet on a couple of the trickier places. 

"Don't worry," Kerda said quietly, once they were both curled up on the ledge. "It's easier getting down."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Tony said, with a strained smile, "One little step that turns into a big one, right?" Kerda could feel his brows furrow. "Nah. Don't worry. I'll make it. I've got friends who'd never forgive me if I didn't."

Noon came and went, and the afternoon breeze was nicely cool until the sun moved too far west, and then it was cooler than Kerda really liked as they sat there on the unforgiving stone. He wished his tunic was warmer. Tony muttered occasionally under his breath, and his fingers twitched. Kerda watched him, and worried, and wondered if he'd be strong enough to climb down come nightfall. He didn't look well. 

"If I'd known I'd be stuck here all day, I'd've kept one of those buckets of water," Kerda said, partway through the afternoon, as his mouth was really starting to feel parched. "Don't know how I'd've got it over here, though. Maybe tie it to my back? Sorry. I'd be a better host if I could."

"You were the one who brought that water they were threatening me with?" Tony asked. "I didn't want it then, and I'm glad I thought to 'pass out' on them before they used it on me, but yeah, a drink would be good right now. But wishes, horses, and all that. I know you would if you could, kid." He let his head fall back against the stone and closed his eyes. Kerda worried some more.

Other than that, they didn't talk much over the course of the day. The risk of being overheard was too great, especially as time went on and the noises filtering up from the courtyards got louder and more agitated. The shouting had started around noon, after the clatter of iron-shod hooves on the cobblestones that meant the arrival of messengers from the capitol. By the tenor of the voices he could hear after that, they'd called all the students out of their classes by mid-afternoon, and set them to combing through all the buildings and outbuildings, cellar to garret, grain bins, woodpiles, and privy-pits. 

Serious voices from out of sight below them caught Kerda's attention late in the afternoon. He couldn't hear what they were saying, but it made him nervous. He nudged Tony's knee with his own. Tony's eyes slitted open, and he sat up straighter. Kerda pulled his knife from its sheath. 

It wasn't a person who peered over the edge of the roof which shielded them from view. It was a mirror, attached to a pole, too far away for Kerda to strike it away—although doing that would have given them away to those waiting on the ground just as surely as their reflection did.

"Shit," said Tony. 

The ladder came up soon after that, and Kerda did kick it away, but he knew it would only be a short time before Simco and the rest of them put something together that would allow them to come up and pull Kerda and Tony down from their refuge. That's what they did at the School, after all, learn to find solutions to problems and puzzles. 

"Oh god, oh god, oh god," he said. This was going to be so bad. He glanced over at Tony, who looked suddenly much more alert than he had been all afternoon. His gaze was fixed on the far wall, but Kerda couldn't see what had attracted his attention. Then, as voices in the courtyard below shouted, "Heave!" and Tony scrabbled his way shakily to his feet on the ledge beside him and waved his arms like a madman, there was a weird humming, rushing noise and all of a sudden an enormous shiny _thing_ was coming towards them through the air really fast, and Kerda was certain that they were going to be smashed flat where they were. 

There was the noise of something large hitting the ground below them, and more shouting, but Kerda couldn't look anywhere but at the shiny thing in the air, which had stopped there, almost close enough to touch, just humming, and floating there like a soap bubble, only huge, huge. Then, a hole opened up in the side of the thing, and a ramp slid out and nudged up against their ledge, and a voice called out, "Tony!"

"Yeah," Tony said, his voice a little shaky. "That's me. Can I get a ride for my friend Kerda here too, Clint?"

"Stop fucking around and get in, damn it. Or do you need help?" said the voice from inside the thing. Clint. He had the same funny accent that Tony did.

"Nope. On my own two feet," Tony said. "Or hands and knees. Whatever." He stepped off the ledge and onto the ramp, then half turned and held out a hand to Kerda. "C'mon. First step's the hardest."

Kerda squeezed his eyes closed, then opened them and stepped forward. The thing in the air held under both their weight. Two more steps forward, following Tony, and the ramp behind them slid up and shut, and he was in a place like nothing he'd ever seen or imagined.

Everything was smooth and all the edges were rounded, and a lot of it was shiny, and there were windows up front that showed the sky and part of the Old Tower, and smaller windows that glowed, and the views they held weren't anything he recognized. Maybe they were drawings, but how'd they glow, then? Something like foxfire? And it was warm, here, after the chill of the late afternoon outside, and there wasn't any sign or scent of a fire. 

He jumped when a large man dressed in bright blue and red and white—what kind of dyes did they have to make such colors?—brushed by him to clasp Tony carefully by his shoulders for a long moment. 

Tony sagged against his hands, then straightened up again. "Hey, Cap."

"You're all right," Cap replied, his voice rough, and then, " _Are_ you all right? Come on, let's get you patched up." He turned to one of the two people sitting on strange-looking chairs up by the windows. "Natasha, can you settle...Kerda in for the flight while I see to Tony?"

"Tony could see to himself," Tony muttered, but looked abashed at the glare that got him from both the large man and Natasha. "But Tony's okay with being seen to after the day he's had. And having been drugged unconscious and abducted the day before."

"I should think so," said Natasha as she stepped in front of Kerda. "Any time you start referring to yourself in the third person, you're automatically disqualified from making decisions about your health and well-being." 

Kerda barely paid attention to her words. She was dressed in something that wasn't like anything he'd ever seen a woman wearing. It was opaque, but showed her whole shape, and her _legs_ , and it made Kerda's face burn to see it. She directed him to sit in one of the chairs behind the man still sitting up by the windows, and he obeyed without saying a word, and he held his breath as she reached across him and pulled a strap across his body and fastened him to the chair. He didn't even move when she took his knife away, so smoothly he almost didn't notice it.

"There," she said, then she noticed his eyes on the knife in her hand. "You'll get that back eventually, if you behave. Now, you just sit tight, and don't worry." 

Kerda nearly laughed. He didn't have a clue what was appropriate to worry about in this strange place and among these strange people, except maybe the humming, rushing noise getting louder all of a sudden. And they were moving now, _flying_ , going by the view from the windows. But it didn't really feel like they were moving, at least not as fast as it looked, and it wasn't bumpy at all. He craned his head to see out of the windows a little better. That was the Cokillet River down there, sure as anything, and that was four days' journey from the School, in good weather. 

"Wow," he said. "What city are you people from, and can you all fly like this, and do you have a school there where I can learn what you know?" He heard Tony laugh, from in the back. He reluctantly turned his head away from the sight out the windows— _flying_ —and smiled back at Tony. 

Cap had already cleaned the blood from Tony's face, and bandaged the worst-looking of the burns Kerda had noticed, and given him a bottle of an orange-colored liquid to drink. He hadn't done anything about the blue thing in his chest; maybe they needed special ointments, or tools, for that. Kerda squelched the superstitious thought which rose unbidden. No, it wouldn't be magic they'd need to deal with the blue thing. Magic was just science you didn't understand well enough yet. 

Tony stayed back where he was and spoke quietly with Cap for a few moments, then leaned forward and kissed him. On the mouth. Kerda stared. But then, what was one more strangeness among all the rest he'd seen this day?

Tony caught him staring, and stood up and came forward to sit across from Kerda. He handed him a bottle of the orange drink. "Here. Soothe your electrolytes."

Kerda took a sip from the oddly light bottle. It didn't taste that good, but he was thirsty, so he drank it all down.

Tony said, "Sorry, kid, you can't come back to where we're from. It's a _long_ way away from here, and I bet your people don't even have the concept of portals, or of time flowing differently on different planes, or of temporal dissonance, so it'd take more time than we have to explain it to you—and you probably wouldn't believe me, anyway."

"I _would_ ," Kerda protested.

"Nope. Tough luck," Tony said. "What we _can_ do is to take you pretty much anywhere you like on your world. Is there somewhere you know that you'd be safe? Back with your family, wherever they are? I know it'd be a bad idea for you to try to go back to the School."

Kerda opened his mouth to protest. Tony shook his head. "And don't whine. Everybody hates a whiner. So. Safe place?"

Kerda sighed in disappointment. "Do you have a map?"

From up front, Clint snorted. "Best map in the world, kid. Computer-refined satellite imaging. Which, I'm sure, means nothing to you. C'mon up here and see. Natasha, let him loose, okay?"

Natasha unhooked him from the strap, while Kerda stared straight ahead and tried not to blush. Then he went forward and Clint pointed to one of the small glowing foxfire windows. "Right there. See that? That's the inland sea you probably know about, and the big river that feeds into it, and the city right there--?" Kerda nodded. Just science you didn't know enough about yet. "I can make it move for you. Where do you want to go?"

Kerda had always wanted to go to Santoun. Where better to learn things than in the biggest city on the continent? The city where trade brought goods and knowledge in from the rest of the known world, and took goods and knowledge back out, more and better. "Right there," he said, and pointed at the same city Clint had. "Santoun. I've got cousins there." Or he probably did, somewhere in the city. The summer before the winter his mother had died and he left for the School, she'd told him that his father's family had been from Santoun. Getting there had been too long a journey for him to think about, though, especially since the School had offered him a place. 

"Somewhere in the hills right _there_ ," he pointed at the map, "'cause I bet you don't want a lot of people to see your, mmm," he searched for a word, "air-ship!" He cocked his head to one side. "Do you? Because of portals and temporal dissemblance?" 

"Bright boy," Tony said approvingly.

Cap came forward and put a big, warm hand on his shoulder. "Are you sure you'll be safe and will have somewhere to live there? We owe you a debt for what you've done for Tony."

Before he could call the words back, Kerda blurted, "I'll be fine—but—teach me to _fly_? Or how to make things fly. Or as much as you can about flying."

"Aww, kid. I wish I could, but we don't have time. You'll have to invent it for yourself." Tony leaned in conspiratorially and said, "But think about hot air, and play around with how water flows." He stood back up and whispered something in Cap's ear. 

Cap said, "No, Tony."

Tony whispered some more. Cap sighed and shook his head. "All right. But just a short one. And be careful." 

Tony grinned as broadly as Kerda had ever seen him. Then, he took a rectangular case from where it lay in the back of the air-ship, and kicked at it. It popped open, and then it was like it came alive—the shiny bright red and gold contents unfurled and sprang out and wrapped themselves around Tony. When it was done, Tony picked up a helmet which still lay in the case. At least _that_ was recognizable, even if the rest of it was far closer to magic armor than Kerda would have believed possible. 

"Do you want me to fly you down to drop you off in the hills? I'm sure Clint will miss the practice of landing the Quinjet—" From up front Clint snorted loudly. "But he'll live." 

"Yes!" said Kerda. If it was flying, he wanted it. 

Tony turned half away from him. "We'll do this piggyback." Kerda knew his face was blank. Tony raised his eyebrows. "And _that's_ the terminology that didn't develop in parallel? Go figure. Okay, we'll do this with your arms around my neck, from the back, and then you hop up and wrap your legs around my middle." Tony put the helmet on, and his voice was different when he continued, "And you hold on, because it's a long way to fall."

That made much more sense. Kerda moved over behind Tony and bent his knees, but stopped when Natasha slid in close to him and tapped his hand. He held it out, palm up, and Natasha slipped his knife into his grasp. He sheathed the blade, then turned back to Tony. He hopped up and wrapped his arms around the armor's metal neck, and his legs around Tony's waist, crossing his ankles. 

"All right. Clint? The door?"

And the door opened, and Tony jumped through it into the air. Kerda couldn't catch his breath for a moment, and then, as they stopped falling and started to _fly_ , cutting curves into the air, racing upwards, then speeding towards the ground, and then back up again, he shouted with joy. 

Too, too soon, though, Tony flew them down and skip-hopped a landing on the top of a hill overlooking the city, and Kerda slid down from his perch. His knees felt all wobbly.

"That was _so_ —! Flying—! Oh, Tony!"

"Liked it, did you? I felt the same way the first time I did it." 

"Yeahhh." Kerda couldn't find the words he wanted to say how amazing it had been, but hoped Tony understood, anyway. But now it was time for him to pull himself together, because partings were important, and he needed to do this properly.

He folded his hands in front of himself and bowed to Tony, then straightened his back and looked him in the eye. "So. All my respect to you and your family, and if you or they should cross my path again, you will have as warm a welcome as any member of my family would have after a long absence. Fare you well." He bowed again.

Tony gave a little, stiff-looking bow to him. "Thank you for your assistance, back there. And fare you well, too." He reached out and patted Kerda on the cheek. "Remember: hot air." And then he flew up away and into the air. 

Kerda watched him go until he could no longer see the bright crimson and gold of his armor glinting in the last rays of the sun, and then he turned his face downhill, and set out towards the city.

* * *

"And that was the last I ever saw of Tony, who flew through the air like no bird that ever was, or of his family, Clint, Cap, and Natasha, and I never found what city they came from, which must be far away, indeed. But I kept his words in my heart and in my head, and when I could, I learned what I might, and came after long years to share in the building of this place where those who seek to know why and how may learn. And now, we keep festival on this day, and mark our celebration with flight!"

And across the valley, the flames roared, and the clumsy-looking bags of fabric filled and grew into their true forms, and scores of gold and scarlet orbs lifted into the first rays of the rising sun.


End file.
